I managed to break my ankle in the most absurd way possible. Technically, I was on my way to go skiing—but saying I was skiing would be a stretch. It’s complicated… I’ll just let some familiar characters explain it.
Title: The Lift Line Elimination: A Ski Injury So Boring It Needed a Seinfeld Episode
Scene: Jerry’s apartment. JERRY, GEORGE, and ELAINE are sitting on the couch, drinking coffee. ROB is in a recliner, leg propped up in a massive cast, looking utterly miserable. KRAMER bursts in, as always, full of energy.
KRAMER: Whoa-ho! Look at this guy! Fresh out of the body shop! How’s the new hardware holding up?
JERRY: Oh, it’s holding up great, Kramer. Rob just had a minor little procedure. You know, just a quick surgery where they bolted his ankle back together like a highway guardrail.
ELAINE: Wait, wait, wait… so you finally skied?
ROB: No.
GEORGE: But you at least made it up the mountain, right?
ROB: I saw the mountain.
ELAINE: Saw it? That’s it?
JERRY: Oh yeah. He didn’t ski the mountain—he witnessed it. He gazed upon it. Admired it. He took in the breathtaking majesty of the slopes. And then? He got taken out by a cat track.
KRAMER: A cat track?
GEORGE: Oh, that’s bad. That’s really bad.
JERRY: Not a slope, not a mogul, not even an icy run—just a boring little cat track at the bottom of the mountain. The kind of thing ski resort staff use to shuttle equipment around. It’s practically a service elevator made of snow.
ROB: I had my skis on for five minutes. Five. Minutes. I wasn’t even skiing—I was just trying to get to the lift ticket window to pick up my ticket. Next thing I know, I hit ice, my skis go one way, my body goes the other, and suddenly I’m in surgery getting a metal plate installed in my leg.
GEORGE: So you managed to hurt yourself… with your skis on… before actually skiing?
ROB: Correct.
ELAINE: That’s gotta be some kind of record.
JERRY: Oh, it’s impressive. Most people get injured on the mountain. Rob here? He got injured on the way to getting permission to go up the mountain. He paid for a lift ticket, never used it, and instead, ended up in a full orthopedic reconstruction.
KRAMER: (nodding, serious) See, that’s the thing about ice. You think you’re in control, but really? The ice makes all the decisions.
GEORGE: This is exactly why I don’t ski. You think the danger is in the trees, the cliffs, the double black diamonds—but no! The real enemy? The sidewalk.
ROB: It wasn’t a sidewalk! It was a cat track!
JERRY: Oh, excuse me, a treacherous, high-stakes, extreme sports danger zone known as… a maintenance road.
ELAINE: So what now? Just sitting around, recovering?
ROB: Oh yeah. Crutches, physical therapy.
JERRY: Honestly? At this point, the most exciting part of this whole thing has been writing up a Seinfeld skit to explain it.
KRAMER: Ohh, that’s very meta.
GEORGE: Yeah, I don’t know what’s sadder, the fact that this happened or the fact that the most entertaining part of it is a fictional version of your own humiliation.
JERRY: I gotta say, though… this is a respectable injury.
ROB: Really?
JERRY: Oh yeah. Not because of the ankle thing—because you managed to turn it into a sitcom episode.
ELAINE: That’s the only way this story is salvageable.
ROB: Well… at least something good came out of it.
KRAMER: (patting ROB on the shoulder) Barely.
(End scene.)
GPT-4o writes a Seinfeld script about my ankle injury.
It’s useful to think of ChatGPT as a translator.1 In this case it takes one idea, about my embarrassing injury, and reworks it in a different context, shaping it into something new while keeping the essence intact. Seinfeld is easy. The show was always built on ideas—observations, quirks, the tiny absurdities of everyday life—turned into conversation.
What if I put it in the world of Friends? It turns out that works fine. The tone is different—a little more playful, a little more personal. But the jokes are substantially the same, just framed through the lens of different characters. The jokes come out more as friendly roasting vs. existential absurdity.
Scene: Central Perk. The group is sitting around the couch. Rob hobbles in on crutches, his leg in a cast.
RACHEL: Whoa! What happened to you? Did a snowboarder run you over? Get caught in an avalanche?
ROB: No, I… never actually skied.
JOEY: (laughing) Dude! That’s worse than the time I fell out of a bunk bed in my own apartment.
CHANDLER: Hold on. You went on a ski trip, but you didn’t ski?
ROB: I had my skis on! I was on my way to pick up my lift ticket, and I slipped on a cat track.
MONICA: What’s a cat track?
ROSS: (matter-of-factly) It’s a flat ski trail used to get around the mountain.
CHANDLER: Ohhh, so… you got taken out by ski transportation.
ROB: (groaning) Yes.
RACHEL: That’s like choking on the wrapper before you even eat the hot dog.
JOEY: It’s like dying in the tutorial level of a video game!
CHANDLER: So just to clarify—while most people get hurt skiing on the mountain, you got hurt commuting?
ROB: I get it!
Let’s try something a little harder, The West Wing. Now we’re into a show that’s not even a comedy. The humor is drier, more intellectual, laced with an air of exasperation. The dialogue moves faster, the wit sharper, and somehow, Rob’s accident sounds like it belongs in a government briefing.
Scene: White House bullpen. JOSH is pacing, SAM is flipping through a folder. ROB sits with his cast elevated, looking miserable.
JOSH: So you’re telling me… you traveled all the way to a ski resort, put on your gear, and instead of a thrilling story about conquering a double black diamond, you’re sitting here with an injury that, frankly, sounds like something that should happen to an old man walking through Geneva?
ROB: I had my skis on for five minutes!
CJ: (deadpan) And now you have a full orthopedic reconstruction. That’s a terrible return on investment.
ChatGPT reimagining my story in the style of The West Wing.
But even The West Wing is still pretty easy. What if we tried something that wasn’t about witty comedy at all? Let’s try Knight Rider, the 1980s show with David Hasselhoff and KITT, his AI-powered Trans Am? ChatGPT still captures the conversational humor between the two. But the humor here comes from KITT overanalyzing the event, giving it the same gravitas as a missile attack.
Scene: A snowy ski resort parking lot. MICHAEL KNIGHT, leaning against KITT, watches as ROB hobbles toward him on crutches, his leg in a massive cast. Snowflakes drift lazily through the air.
KITT: (incredulous) Michael, I have performed high-speed pursuits across rugged desert terrain, evaded missile attacks, and driven through literal explosions… and yet I find this to be the least dignified accident I have ever analyzed.
ROB: (grumbling) I didn’t even get to ski.
KITT: Ah, an injury without the satisfaction of the activity itself. That is—how do humans put it?—deeply unfortunate.
MICHAEL KNIGHT: See, now that’s the real tragedy—because skiing’s supposed to be fun! And instead? You got taken out before the game even started. That’s like entering a high-speed chase… and then immediately getting a flat tire.
KITT: Or attempting to jump over a canyon… and then reversing into a ditch instead.
ROB: Alright, alright, I get it!
ChatGPT writing my story about Knight Rider.
And then, we get to The Smurfs. Every show has its own way of making fun of me, but here? The injury becomes Smurf culture. The joke isn’t just about me falling—it’s about how even in a village full of tiny blue creatures, I still managed to be the least coordinated one there. This version leans into Smurf logic, where everything is just slightly off-kilter and full of puns.
Scene: Smurf Village. Rob Smurf is sitting on a toadstool with his leg propped up, wrapped in leaves and bandages. The other Smurfs have gathered around—Papa Smurf, Smurfette, Hefty Smurf, Clumsy Smurf, Brainy Smurf, and even Jokey Smurf, who is barely containing his laughter.
PAPA SMURF: Oh yes. He didn’t ski the mountain—he witnessed it. He gazed upon it. Admired it. Took in the breathtaking majesty of the snowy peaks. And then? He got taken out by a smurfin’ cat track.
BRAINY SMURF: Do you realize how difficult it is to get injured before actually skiing? There are detailed Smurf physics involved in that level of incompetence. It’s scientifically smurf-nomenal.
JOKEY SMURF: Oh, oh! Wait, wait! I got a joke! What’s the difference between Rob Smurf and a snowflake?
ROB SMURF: …
JOKEY SMURF: The snowflake actually makes it down the mountain! AHAHAHA!
CLUMSY SMURF: (laughing so hard he trips over a rock) Haha—wait, wait—so let me get this straight, Rob Smurf, I’m Clumsy Smurf, but you managed to hurt yourself without even moving down a slope? Ohhhh, that’s smurftacular!
ROB SMURF: I had my skis on for five minutes. Five. Smurfin’. Minutes. I wasn’t even skiing—I was just trying to get to the lift ticket hut to pick up my ticket. Next thing I know, I hit ice, my skis go one way, my body goes the other, and suddenly I’m in the medic hut getting my leg wrapped up like a smurfberry basket.
ChatGPT does The Smurfs.
Each version keeps the same facts—me, the cat track, the surgery—but every shift in tone and perspective makes it something slightly different, shaped by the rhythm and logic of the show it’s set in. The story doesn’t change, but the way it’s told does, as if it’s being translated into a different language each time.
In Seinfeld, it’s about observing the absurdity.
In Friends, it’s a group roast.
In The West Wing, it’s a bureaucratic mess.
In Knight Rider, it’s a tactical failure.
And in The Smurfs, it’s just another day in Smurf Village.
Same story, different world. And that’s the fun of it.
Footnotes
- One of my favorite pieces about AI is the article Google’s AI transformation which talks about how AI is the basis of Google Translate. ↩︎
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